Impact of an Integrated Reservoir Geological Model on Well Placement: A Case Study from Saudi Arabia

Emad A. Busbait*, Ishak Ishak, Abdulmoniem Badri, and Khalifa Mohammed
Saudi Aramco
*[email protected]

The objective of this study is to build an integrated geological model for a Jurassic reservoir in Saudi Arabia utilizing all available static and dynamic data to optimize field development plan and well placement. The Late Jurassic Arab Formation is one of the most important reservoirs in the Middle East. During this period a carbonate platform developed in most of the Arabian Gulf and extended to the Zagros Mountains in Iran and central Iraq. The reservoir consists of 45–50 ft of packstone to grainstone reservoir overlain by 5–15 ft of anhydrite. A total of 533 ft of cores from 13 wells have been studied and also results from 54 wells including well logs and well performance have been used. In this study, different sources of data with different scales were integrated to produce a single model that best represents the reservoir. This project was carried out through three main stages. The first stage was a detailed reservoir characterization study for the reservoir including core description, rock and facies types, pore geometry and diagenesis. The second stage involved univariate and multivariate statistical analysis of input data such as well logs. In the third stage, an integrated stochastic reservoir model was built using different geostatistical modeling techniques. This newly generated model captured the reservoir heterogeneities and was used to optimize placement of horizontal wells and to predict reservoir performance. So far a total of seven horizontal wells have been drilled with 29,000 footage based on this study and the results are very satisfactory in matching expectation.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90077©2008 GEO 2008 Middle East Conference and Exhibition, Manama, Bahrain